Police Reform
Coverage of civil action, news events and policy change pertaining to policing in Chicago, Illinois and the U.S.
The courtroom at the Area 3 police station at Belmont and Western will be staffed from 8 a.m. to midnight during the week of the convention, which begins Aug. 19.
The department got a black eye over how it dealt with protests following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. And the images of cops beating demonstrators with batons during the Democratic convention in 1968 are still seared into the national consciousness.
The video will “shock the conscience of America. It is that senseless, that unnecessary, that unjustifiable, that unconstitutional,” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing the family of Sonya Massey.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg wanted to bar David Brown from being rehired after he refused to cooperate with an investigation linked to a drug bust involving a police chief’s car. Police officials rebuffed the request.
Anthony Driver, president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, said the referral to Inspector General Deborah Witzburg was based on ‘information from multiple knowledgeable sources that raised serious concerns’ about the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
John Velez was just 17 when he was found guilty of killing Anthony Hueneca in March 2001. Velez served 16 years in prison before the conviction was vacated after a witness’s admission that he hadn’t actually seen the shooting happen.
Canceling time off kills police morale at a critical time before the Democratic National Convention, John Catanzara said. But the police department said the cancellations are only made to ensure sufficient staffing, and officers are given advance notice.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said officers tied to extremist groups “are dishonoring the badge.”
At least 4 out of every 5 police agencies in the state reported higher rates of stopping Black and Latino drivers compared to white drivers.
A coalition of community organizations says the policy still fails to draw a line between crowds protected under the First Amendment and those engaged in illegal activity such as looting.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability said the officer’s alleged history of domestic violence “should not be tolerated.”
Judge Angela Petrone denied Kevin Jackson’s motion to vacate his conviction in a two-hour ruling on Monday, citing a lack of compelling new evidence to overturn the jury’s verdict.
Nancy Adduci, former director of the Cook County state’s attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, had said she found nothing wrong with the prosecution of Kevin Jackson for the murder of another man at a West Side gas station in 2001.
Chicago Police Board member Andreas Safakas ruled to allow a disciplinary hearing on the case “that provides due process to all parties.”
Witnesses at federal court hearings worried that including traffic stops in a consent decree originally issued in 2019 to reform the Chicago Police Department would actually slow attempts to curb the controversial practice.
The four men spent a combined 73 years in prison after confessing as teenagers to a 1995 double murder they did not commit. Three of them later said police coerced their confessions; the fourth man said police fabricated his.
Officers Daniel Fair, Jeffery Morrow, Kevin Taylor and Rupert Collins are accused of engaging in misconduct that the Civilian Office of Police Accountability deemed “substantial and irrefutable.”
Lakisha German said she knew there was ‘B.S. going on’ when an officer took her handgun and told her, ‘This never happened.’
Just days after Officer Pierre Tyler was found not guilty on all counts, Chicago’s police oversight chief told the city’s top cop that she wants Tyler fired for shooting the mother of one of his children and attacking her months earlier.